McCarthy to 'embarrass' Obama on guns

12/14/12 5:32 PM EST

In the wake of the deadly Connecticut school shooting, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy said she has warned the White House “the gloves are off” if President Obama fails to act on the issue.

McCarthy (D-N.Y.), the foremost gun control advocate in Congress, said she spoke with White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew before Election Day and told him she will exert pressure on the White House to push for gun control legislation.

“I said, ‘Jack, I know the president is going through an election and I’m telling you after the election I’m coming out full force,’” McCarthy told POLITICO Friday. “I was just giving the White House a heads up that the gloves are off on my side and I was going to do everything I possibly could. … If that meant embarrassing everybody, that’s what I would do.”

Embarrassing the White House, McCarthy said, meant building a large-scale public campaign to ban assault weapons. She pledged to continue to work with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others to build support for her cause.

“I want to talk to the White House. I know that they can’t give me an answer tonight, but I want to know what they’re going to do. I need to know what they’re going to do.”

The Connecticut school shooting sent TV bookers and reporters seeking out McCarthy, a Democrat just elected to her ninth term whose husband was killed and son severely injured in a 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road. She has long sought to pass gun control legislation, most recently fighting to enact laws forbidding high-capacity gun clips like ones used in past mass shootings.

It’s not yet clear if similar clips were used in the Friday massacre.

McCarthy said she was pleased with Obama’s somber tone in his four-minute White House statement acknowledging Friday’s incident, but said action should have been taken long ago.

“I agree, this is not the time to talk about (gun control),” she said. “It should have been talked about years ago when we started having these mass shootings. It should have been done when Gabby Giffords was shot.”